


Fool Me Twice

by GypsySisters



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-12 08:37:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9064426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GypsySisters/pseuds/GypsySisters





	

Lizzie nuked a Cuppa Noodles in her motel room. “Tom would have given me so much crap for eating this,” she thought, then kicked her shoe off so hard it went flying and knocked over the ice bucket. There was nothing in it to spill. Liz sat down in a huff. She felt like breaking something.

Of course Tom Keen was a lie. A fantasy. A delusion she had been so willing to believe that she practically bait and hooked herself. He felt like he was perfect for her, they felt like they were mades for each other…because they were. And he was. Perfect. A story molded around her broken and incomplete identity then cast into her life with a gravity she could not ignore.

Her whole life she felt like pieces were missing, like she was broken, damaged, incapable of finding peace. Bad boyfriends. Rough days. Haunted nights. Her life was like sliding from one nightmare to the next…until she met Tom Keen.

He was impossible: kind and sweet and…seemingly innocent. He seemed like he lived on the pages of a magazine: glossy, sexy, full of light…and yet…

Deep in her gut she always felt there was some uncracked mystery to him, and that anchored her to him. It was because he needed her…that’s what she could never make sense of…he needed her as if he was in search of a lost idea of home as badly as she was. Which shouldn’t have felt so true.

But she stopped asking questions and–for once in her life–allowed herself to become deluded by happiness.

Happiness.

Huh.

What a lie.

The microwave beeped. She pulled out the styrofoam cup, only to burn her fingers on the steam. She never remembered to give it a moment & always ended up hurt.  
Now that she knew the truth about Tom, everything they had shared was suddenly cast in a new light. Tom wasn’t good, he was just good for her…it was all a show, an attempt to be something to draw her in. It was all a lie.  
But that lie shattered what little hope she has left in her own happiness.

Sucking her fingers where they burned, she felt everything pile up, like a huge warming from the universe: hurt hurt hurt…

Sometimes she thinks she sees Ressler looking at her the way Tom once did, and she thinks, just for a moment, “Maybe he sees me–truly sees me–and maybe I won’t have to carry this burden alone..,” but then she remembers: no. If Tom taught her anything, it’s that anyone who feels like a soulmate is just a con artist peddling a fantasy life. Real Life hurts. That’s how you know you’re alive.

She waits for her meal to cool and eats it quickly. She goes through her evening routine: shower off the day, brush her teeth, watch tv while she blow dries her hair. Crawl into bed while the evening sitcoms devolve into increasingly raunchy late night date shows, and eventually turn off the tv to stare at the stucco ceiling.

Alone. Alone. It’s safer alone. If you don’t keep anything in your bucket, then there’s nothing there to spill.

But–even so–while Liz lies there, tossing and turning under the polyester comforter, the white noise of the highway droning in her mind, she is plagued by wakefulness until–at last–she thinks of her partner: Donald Ressler. His determination. His moral strength. His disarming smile. The way he fights for anything he believes in–the way he fights for her. For a moment, holding the memory of him in her mind, Liz feels safe enough to fall asleep.


End file.
